Despite economic setbacks, immigrant remains confident in future

Tim Loh

Updated 12:00 am, Sunday, April 21, 2013

Mohammad Alam talks with Danbury Probate Judge Dianne Yamin, who sponsored him into the club 17 years ago, during the weekly luncheon meeting of the Danbury Lions Club, at Anthony's Lake Club in Danbury, Conn. Thursday, March 14, 2013.

Mohammad Alam, standing left, and Frank Molinaro, club secretary, talk with other members, including Wayne Shepperd, right, during the weekly luncheon meeting of the Danbury Lions Club, at Anthony's Lake Club in Danbury, Conn. Thursday, March 14, 2013.

Mohammed Rafiqul Alam talks with Jim Maloney, former U.S. Representative from the 5th District, during a Democratic rally featuring U.S. Senate candidate Chris Murphy at the Danbury War Memorial Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012.

Mohammad Rafiqul Alam and his wife, Nasreen, play on their karam board at home in Danbury on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Karam is a Bangladeshi board game that is a mixture of billiards and table shuffleboard.

Parviz Alam looks down the staircase to his mother, Nasreen, and father, Mohammad Rafiqul, at their home in Danbury on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Their chandelier comes with 95 lights and is winch operated so it can be easily brought down to clean and change lights.

DANBURY -- Plucking his name tag from a box of badges at the Lions Club luncheon, Mohammed Rafiqul Alam crosses the buffed clubhouse floor to his center table, leading his important guest.

With a bright sun shining outside, he could choose to enjoy the sweeping view of Danbury's Lake Kenosia through the window. But he's more eager to scan the crowd for contacts.

In his nearly 20 years here, Rafiq, as he is called, has made friends with many of Danbury's most influential people -- including the local probate judge, the city attorney and the mayor's chief of staff, all of whom are seated at his table.

Today, the table will also include his 22-year-old son, Prince.

When the time comes, the 50 or so attendees -- mostly middle-aged and older white men -- stand and face the flag. Knowing what's about to happen, Rafiq leans in and whispers something to his son, who appears startled.

"Today," the MC announces, "we would like Prince to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance."

Prince hesitates. He stares at his feet, nervous about taking the lead. So the first voice to break the silence belongs to the man born halfway around the world.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag," Rafiq begins.

***

In an era when many people question the fundamental promise of American life, Rafiq chooses to focus on the countervailing evidence.

Confronted with data on high unemployment, stagnating wages and spiking education and health care costs, as well as the fact that Fairfield County has the nation's greatest income inequality, he asserts that great opportunity for all is still at hand.

He notes that immigrants still stream to America and our universities are still considered the best in the world. Yet the 50-year-old father of two young adults knows well how competitive the world has become, too. He acknowledges that many manufacturing jobs will never return to Fairfield County and the past few years have buffeted his own financial standing. He knows his sons' generation could face challenges he can't even imagine.

In his mind, we all must work smarter and harder so that hopelessness can never enshroud the country that's brought him so much.

"It's like Lincoln says in that new film," he says. "We don't even know what types of freedom we don't have yet."

***

Rafiq yearned to discover some of those freedoms as a boy.

Growing up in Dhaka, the poverty-stricken capital of Bangladesh, he watched his engineer father supplement the family's income by renting out properties. When his father died, Rafiq, an eighth-grader, began collecting rents and managing tenants. He soon joined the Leo Club, the youth offshoot of Lions Club International. There, he traveled to storm-battered regions and learned to administer flu vaccines, and to lean on other people for help and connections.

Before long, he dreamed of traveling to America to study. He was about 17 when he told his eight siblings and mother of his plan. It took him about a year to convince them and build the courage to go.

He arrived in Queens, N.Y., in 1983, in the middle of what was then the deepest recession in decades. He got a job at a Manhattan deli, and learned if he worked 15 hours a day, he wouldn't have time to feel really homesick. He studied English and computer science at a community college, where he'd wear slacks and a sports coat, and eventually caught the attention of a dean. The dean promised he could get him a job at one of the world's most successful companies: IBM.

But first, Rafiq took a job in information technology on Wall Street. He then left for a month when he got word that his mother was sick. In Bangladesh, his mom told him he could get a job anytime, anywhere. She wanted him to stay and said if he left, he'd likely never see her again. He only wishes he had stayed a little longer.

"I was four hours from the airport when she died," he says, eyes welling with tears.

Back in America, IBM hired Rafiq, brought him to Waterbury and funded his classes in computer programming at Teikyo Post University. He brought his wife, Nasreen, from Bangladesh and they soon had their first son, Prince.

During that time, Rafiq supplemented the family's income by updating the computer system of a nearby grocery store.

Soon after he graduated in 1993, IBM laid off about 40,000 workers, including much of Rafiq's department. Though he kept his job, that left a bad taste in his mouth, so he got started on the side career he'd long dreamed of.

With some of the extra cash he'd saved, he bought a four-family home in a low-income corner of Danbury, right next to the thrumming traffic on Interstate 84. He would live there with his wife and son -- and soon his second son, Parviz -- for three years.

The rental income from the three other units paid the mortgage.

***

When Rafiq saw the Lions Club on her resume, he got excited.

It was 1994, and Dianne Yamin had stopped by, campaigning for re-election as probate judge. With his wife, Rafiq stuffed envelopes for Dianne's campaign. The judge, one of the first women to join the Danbury Lions Club just a few years earlier, repaid Rafiq by sponsoring him to join the club of his youth -- the local chapter's first minority member in memory.

By the late 1990s, Rafiq had used his IBM income to buy several more multifamily homes, mostly out of foreclosure. To handle the growing piles of paperwork, he turned to some of his new Lions Club friends. Chief among them was Dianne's husband, Bob.

Rafiq admired Bob's wit and energy, and especially his class ring from Harvard Law School. Bob had been part of the Class of '83, graduating the same year Rafiq arrived in America.

Rafiq invited the Yamins over for dinner often. He brought his boys to the Lions Club service events and luncheons. In 2000, Rafiq called Bob to tell him he quit his job at IBM.

"You did what?!" Bob recalls saying. "Don't you need that?"

***

Thirteen years later, Rafiq works mainly from the office of his 5,000-square-foot mansion, which he built in 2006 for $1.3 million.

The palatial, fenced-in home, in a neighborhood that overlooks forested hills to the north, is the gem in his portfolio of real estate in town that includes nearly 70 apartments and storefronts. It's also a testament to everything he's become.

He's decorated the walls with pictures of his wife and him with Bill Clinton. He's got a postcard by the phone that Bob Yamin sent from a Harvard Law reunion.

He also has a photo of Prince graduating from the University of Connecticut's honors program after only three years with a degree in biomedical engineering. To speed up his progress, Prince took summer courses at Yale.

Rafiq has newspaper clippings of Parviz, now 17, competing in a high school robotics tournament that sent him to California. After taking high school summer courses at Harvard, Parviz came home to help found the first Leo Club at Danbury High.

One night at a Democratic Town Committee party, few people seem to actually know him. He sits at the front table, nearest the exit. But then in walks Bob Yamin, in a pin-striped suit with a tie, the Republican city attorney perfectly at ease among the Democrats. He sits down opposite Rafiq, near a couple of fellow lawyers, and invites him into the conversation.

Under the dull, fluorescent lights, Bob's Harvard class ring sparkles -- as does Rafiq's emerald ring from Teikyo Post University. In a lull in the conversation, Rafiq leans back and poses a random question.

"What's your neck size?"

"I'm not saying," Bob says. "Then you'll go out and buy me a shirt."

Rafiq smiles.

"I've already bought it."

***

For all of Rafiq's progress, he's lost ground since 2008. He lacks the salary he enjoyed at IBM, and his rental income is far from what he made in the middle of the last decade. His mansion's market value has dropped well below $1 million. Meantime, universities count his properties as part of his wealth, which means his sons don't qualify for financial aid.

So he heads into town one crisp spring day to check on the progress of his latest project.

He takes his silver 2008 SUV from his stock of three Mercedes -- all of them "certified, pre-owned," he says, since he hasn't bought a new car in a decade. It takes about 15 minutes to negotiate the narrow, twisting roads from his woodsy corner of Danbury's northwest to get to Main Street.

On the way, he passes his first-ever home. He points to the nearby public school where he sent Prince and Parviz. The school is near a cluster of low-income housing. Rafiq relishes the diversity his sons experienced there, which they wouldn't have found in an elite private school.

Next, he heads past their second home -- a four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot house. He bought it in the mid '90s and sold it for a handsome profit.

Closer to downtown, he points out his four-townhouse property, which cost him $400,000 in 2003 and might get him $375,000 today -- if he's lucky. To fill his apartments, he's dropped the rents for the two-bedroom dwellings from $1,100 to $975.

Finally, he stops by his real estate office, which sits on Main Street across from the Police Department. It's a nondescript storefront, sharing street frontage with the bail and bond agency that rents space from him next door. His office itself is a large room filled with familiar trappings: American flag bunting, long tables to take up space, photos of himself with Bill Clinton and other politicians. Rafiq wants to move his office into a smaller room under construction in the back of the building, so he can rent this space to a grocer. He needs the money.

His handyman has just arrived, a Mexican immigrant named Jimmy, who pulls up in his big, black pickup truck.

"Hello, mister," Jimmy says.

Rafiq shows him the paint and molding for renovating his office. He walks him around to a studio apartment that's also under construction. He tells Jimmy the apartment is the higher priority. It will bring in money faster. He tells Jimmy to speed up the work. "You're giving me more time?" Rafiq asks. "Yes, mister," says Jimmy.

Back home, Rafiq settles on his living room sofa, mentally working through the math of the coming years and decades.

This summer, Prince will graduate from Columbia with a master's in biotechnology. He'll start medical school in Long Island this fall. At the same time, Parviz will head to a top engineering college. Maybe RPI or Carnegie Mellon.

One day, they could be anything, Rafiq says.

He's convinced they can live a good life in Danbury. He considers it an up-and-coming town, at the crossroads of Westchester, Litchfield and lower Fairfield counties.

Doctors. Bankers. Engineers. Politicians.

"The only thing they have to be," he says, "is more successful than me."

He flashes a half smile.

"Why shouldn't they be? They were born here."

***

Back at the Lions Club, members sit down with their meatballs, green beans and salad. Then the business cards shuffle across Rafiq's table like he was playing blackjack in Vegas.

Hesitantly, his head bent just a hair, Prince engages his neighbors in conversation. One's a doctor, who is opening a new practice in Danbury.

Moments later, a guest lecturer steps to the microphone. She's a life coach and wants to talk about cultivating a vision for your life, working your dream into reality. She recalls a client who'd wanted to become a sustainable gardener. She helped him overcome his doubts, work through his finances.

"The two most important days of your life," she says, "are the day you're born and the day you figure out why."

When she's finished, the meeting is beginning to break up. People are standing, getting ready to head back to work. Rafiq and Prince are ready to drive home. But first, Rafiq spots an old friend across the room, an executive at Danbury Hospital.